Many people in the world live in apartments, houses, or dorm rooms that have small kitchens with limited (or no) countertops or work surfaces. Further, many people participate in recreational activities in places with confined spaces and limited workspace such as recreational vehicles, boats, campsites, tail gate parties, barbecues, or the like. Often these locations have an inadequate area of workspace or countertop space, if any. Since people also like to combine meals and food while living or participating in a recreational activity, at times of food preparation or presentation, there is a need to temporarily increase the area of workspace or countertop space. It is desirable that these temporary portable workspaces are removable and allow for easy storage when the table top is not needed. People have use folding tables for many years for this particular purpose.
Folding card tables are portable, but often bulky as they include a solid one-piece table surface. Thus, to store and transport a workspace or table four feet long, one requires a location in a car or other transportation method that has a continuous area of four feet long. This is often difficult to find in any mode of transportation. Further, folding tables have a fixed table height and, therefore, if one desires to have a workspace or countertop extension at one height, they are bound by the fixed height of a folding card table. Having a work surface of uniform height is advantageous for a variety of reasons, including having a universal portable workstation that may be used in a variety of applications as a temporary work surface extension that matches the height of the existing work surface at that location. For example, one portable workstation that is able to provide a temporary extension of a desk at a height of twenty-nine inches (29″) above the floor in an office, and also be used to provide a temporary work surface at counter height of thirty six inches (36″). The temporary tables in the prior art with fixed length legs may only match one of these heights, if any, and only if the heights matched by chance. Thus, there is a need in the art for a portable workstation having an adjustable height to match the height of a plurality known work spaces.
Further, existing portable tables do not attach to the existing surface, so there is always some discontinuity or a joint where items may fall through. Thus, another need exists for a temporary, portable workstation that can attach to an existing fixture to provide some continuity between the two surfaces.